Last night is a debate that shouldn’t have happened. But Bill Nye is a defender of science, and there are people who insist creationism is science, and Bill Nye, being a nice guy, tried politely to explain why they were being dumb by talking about fish sex. Here’s everything you need to know about last night’s debate about creationism.

I know who Bill Nye is, but who was he debating?

Ken Ham, the founder of the Creation Museum. To be fair to Ham, he’s not just some rube: He’s got a bachelor’s of applied science from one of Australia’s top universities. That said, he’s lucky Bill Nye doesn’t have a mean bone in his body, because Nye could have completely destroyed him last night.

I don’t follow this stuff closely; recap creationism for me?

First, it’s worth sorting young-Earth creationism, which is what was being debated, from Intelligent Design. Neither are science, but the former is the belief that, essentially, the Bible is literally true and the Earth was created six thousand years or so ago, give or take a few centuries. Intelligent Design is just basically a softer version of that, arguing that there must be some guiding force to the universe that shows life was “planned.”

Wait, you just said neither are science?

Nope. Both intelligent design and young-Earth creationism don’t stand up to the scientific method, because you essentially can’t prove the hypothesis, which is that God exists, in a lab. There aren’t any experiments you can even run: All of intelligent design boils down to, essentially, “This stuff is too complicated to just happen by random chance. BOOM! ROASTED!”

We have yet to see a hand come out of the clouds and dump a new animal in the Hudson. So the scientific theory of evolution kind of has the edge here.

To win the debate, Ken Ham had to come up with a new, fresh, and compelling argument that creationism is science?

Yes.

Did he?

Ham essentially spent the entire debate whining about how words have meanings, those meanings don’t agree with what he thinks, and that’s not faaa-aaaair. He literally opened his remarks by claiming science had been “hijacked” by secularists and spent a lot of time arguing about how he and other creationists are noble free-thinkers fighting the establishment.

Keep in mind, when confronted with the question of whether or not he takes the Bible literally, which is the entire basis of the philosophy he’s espousing, Ham said he takes the Bible “naturally.” That should really tell you all you need to know about how this debate went, philosophically. Ham presented nothing that you haven’t heard before, which boils down to “God’s real, you’re wrong, so there.”

What did Bill Nye respond with?

Essentially Nye spent most of his time pointing to the facts, from bringing out a rock that he found outside to discussing the many, many points of evidence supporting evolution. He does raise a few points, noting, for example, that if kangaroos somehow arrived in the Middle East and went to Australia, even if this happened during Pangaea, we’d have kangaroo fossils all over the place. But mostly, Nye just pretty much points out the basic problem, which is that there’s literally zero facts to support anything in creationism.

Dammit, tell me about the fish sex!

Nye mentions “traditional fish sex” at one point. Here’s what he breaks it down as: Fish could simply reproduce by themselves. Instead, they choose to have sex with other fish. Why? Because they evolved to: Sexual reproduction.

But yeah, people are stuck on that, because, come on, it’s the scientist of your childhood saying “traditional fish sex.”

So Nye won?

In the sense that he had the facts to back him up and actually presented an argument, but it seems unlikely anybody would have come away convinced if they were on the opposite side.

Join The Discussion

My take on the whole thing has always been: science asks a question and then searches for evidence leading to an answer, religion has the answer (God did it) and back-fills all the questions and evidence.

I always like it when some mouth breather who doesn’t understand the difference between a scientific theory and the laymen’s definition of theory,which is more like a hypothesis,
says that you cant prove Evolution because its just a theory.

The problem is that it hurts humanity to believe a giant invisible man in the sky will save you, and you will live on in golden eternity. This demotivates positive action, such as giving a shit about the planet. Religions says – fuck it, just follow these rules, stay humble, and when you die,everything will be great. It’s rather obvious and simple manipulation.

Scientists have a method for coming to agreement — making observations, testing, etc. So over time science does converge on answers. A lot of old debates have been settled. For example, geologists used to argue about the age of the Earth, but they pretty much all now agree that it’s about 4.5 billion years old. We still do have some debates, though, because science is slow and tedious and far from complete. Getting closer all the time, though!

Ham is an extremist crank. Anybody who believes his nonsense will never change their minds. In fact, Ham said as much in the debate. He won’t change his mind. What Nye nailed was coming in there with excitement and joy about science. He made it seem fun when Ham was a dry dope. Maybe, just maybe some kid saw Nye’s energy and latched onto it just a little bit.

If the universe was created by intelligent design, The designer (God) would clearly be working with a tool-set that is so far beyond our ability to understand, that debating it with our understanding of science is silly.

Absolutely, there’s an argument there that can be tailored to at least sound some kind of reasonable in the form of “well 7 days to God really means 7 eras of evolution and God got that ball rolling etc etc” (and in a way unassailable if you’re already inclined to think a certain way since you’d later be asking science to disprove God’s existence), but I guess the brain chemistry that leads someone to be that stubbornly religious excludes the possibility of trying to argue your religion from a logical perspective.

That said, we’re all chemicals working our way to becoming dirt and that’s the whole of it.

Put me in the “this is pointless crowd”. Debating extremists is pointless. It’s like watcher Ann Coulter on Piers Morgan. It’s clearly a show, no one will change anyone else’s minds, but radicals will sell their silly books. Might as well explain to a dog not to lick its own ass. And bitchy atheists aren’t a whole lot better.

I know a lot of evangelicals, and a fair number of what I think of as “evangelical atheists” — and the “evangelical atheists” I know are a lot more forceful about trying to force their views on other people. YMMV

Another cheer for “what a pointless exercise.” The people that believe one thing are almost incapable of believing the other thing. The only thing this debate did was make me look at my beer and think, “Holy shit, there are like, a lot of people who believe in magic that I interact with on the daily.” Which means there’s an equal number (or more) of people thinking, “Holy shit, there are like, a buttload of folks that refuse to see God’s majesty and live a moral life.” Or whatever they think. Maybe something about golf shirts. I see a lot of golf shirts on church family patriarchs.

Many people won’t ever change their minds, but some will. I was raised to believe in Young-Earth Creationism, but I changed my mind through study. Hopefully Nye has inspired some others to do the same.

Yeah to all of this. TheRealMSol describes intelligent design, and Cheezits describes what’s called the Day-Age Theory. There’s also theological evolution, which is basically just “yeah, I’m an evolutionary scientist and I also happen to believe in God. Cool, right? Let’s have some beers!”

Young earth creationism relies not only on contortion of facts and evidence to fill in for religious assumptions, but (even more egregiously to me, as a former English major and a former evangelical who went to an evangelical university) a misunderstanding of POETRY.

The creation story (which Ken Ham lumped in with the rest of the history in Genesis, for literally no reason except possibly that the early church decided the whole book could be called “Genesis”) is very clearly a poem. Even just a casual observer looking at other poetry in the Bible can recognize the form; biblical scholars have no problem identifying this. Ham saying he interprets the Bible “naturally” basically means that he refuses to learn anything about it that isn’t the stuff he figured he already knew the day he picked it up. And for some reason, he assumed the poetic account of creation provided (twice, btw) at the beginning of the Old Testament, was science.

When you start out with terrible reading skills, and an inability to think abstractly (or a complete distrust of any abstract thought, which Ham shows throughout this “debate”), there’s no way you’re going to make your way to good science.

To the poem point: the story of Creation in Genesis is actually *two* stories, from different Levantine traditions. The first one, which goes up to Genesis 2:3, is a northern priestly chant, with a lot of repetition, telling how the Elohim (a pluralistic deity) created domains (darkness/light, sky/sea, land), rulers for those domains (heavenly bodies, birds and fish, land animals), and then a ruler for the rulers (humans — again, plural).

After a bridge in Genesis 2:4 (probably added by a latter-day editor), Genesis 2:5 picks up with a southern legend, sort of a “just-so story”, where Yahweh (a singular, male deity, rather tempestuous and even child-like) creates the Garden of Eden and sculpts The Human to live in it, later adding animals and, much later, The Woman. This leads into that incident with The Snake, which purports to explain why men have to work, woman have pain in childbirth, and snakes don’t have legs.

The two accounts are extremely different: the style, the nature of the deity, the order of creation, what they seek to explain, etc. The book doesn’t even agree with itself, so obviously you can’t take it literally. (Although I have no doubt the ancient Levantines did, at least before the different traditions were mashed up together.)

the biggest argument against evolution – Abiogenesis. Evolution explains everything after that pretty well, but that is a huge gap that evolution does not answer. that being said, how anyone can think the earth is 6000 years old is beyond me. I believe in God, but there is so much we dont know and probably will never be able to answer. “believe in what you want cuz no one knows or seen what happens, ya bastards” – flatbush zombies

Evolution isn’t meant to answer that. Abiogenesis is a separate issue. And it’s a 4-billion-year-old mystery, so, yeah, there aren’t many clues left. Doesn’t mean work is futile, though. We’re making slow progress on it. Certainly no sense in being a defeatist.

I went to a private school that taught both Evolution and Intelligent Design/Young Earth Theory. It was obvious even as a 15 year old that one was actual science and the other was akin to that guy on the History Channel that thinks everything leads to aliens.

The reason so many Christians (mostly fundamentalists) hold so tight to the young earth theory is because they’re insistent that the bible is literally 100% true front to back. Somehow the bible being historically accurate is better than a bible that is full of analogies and allegory. I can’t remember why, I’ll be honest I read comic books most of the time during Bible class.

I dont get why if you dont think that jonah was swallowed by a whale or that jesus sent demons into pigs then made them run off a cliff, that means Jesus isnt real. I have no idea if hes the Messiah or what have you, but there is proof that a man named Jesus, from Nazareth went around talkin about how whipass God is, and that he was killed for it.

Just accept that and stop telling me that god hates the gays, if you want to believe hes the Messiah, good for you, if someone doesnt believe that, just leave em alone. Dont talk about magic or when the earth was made, just be happy with Jesus or whatever dude you worship, and leave everyone alone.

@BingoDan I feel like an ass doing so but actually outside of the Bible there is no proof of Jesus. There is a huge gap in time of when things were written about him and when he was supposed to have lived. No Roman records of an execution or any of that. Unlike say other historical figures like Julius Ceaser or Alexander the Great where there are actual historical notes and mentions of him during his life time. There is actually more evidence of King Arthur than there is of Jesus. Most of the physcial evidence i.e. shroud of Turin or his brothers death box have shown to be hoaxes the Turin dating back to the 1300’s.

But who knows maybe I am just perpetuating the lies of the Time Traveling Super Satan who wants to fuck with our time line so we will never know the answer! (Credit to Ham for not bringing up Time Traveling Super Satan in his arguments on fossils and such)

02.05.14 at 4:39 pm

Dan Seitz

@Duchess To be fair, primary sources from 2000 years ago ARE a bit thin on the ground.

@DevilDinosaur I went to Catholic school for a long time. Even the nuns there flat out said that parts of the Old Testament were not meant to be taken literally. They understood that it was impossible for certain things to be literally true. The one example that stand out to me is a nun stating categorically the Methuselah didn’t live to be 900 or however many years old.

For me, I guess I’m agnostic or something like that, it’s enough to take the good lessons from any religion. The 10 Commandments are compatible with pretty much any age or society.

02.05.14 at 5:28 pm

Old Fat Bald Chick Magnet

The thing that people don’t want to consider is this: the Bible was written thousands of years ago, by and for people who had very little exposure to anything beyond their village. Some of the stories were written for illustrative effect, even though today you wouldn’t need that to make your points.

We’re all so worldly and sophisticated by those standards that we can poke holes in anything–but that doesn’t mean there isn’t wisdom to be gleaned from a parable.

@JTRO — you’re talking about Catholics, who (at least in the U.S.) aren’t fundamentalists for the most part (get out of here, Opus Dei). I’m not an apologist for the Catholic Church by any stretch, but by and large, your experience is my experience — Catholics are pretty reasonable when it comes to the literal/allegory debate.

Sounds like Catholic School was more progressive than my non-denominational protestant school. I had a Science teacher tell us that Methusala was able to live to 900 because of a vapor canopy that covered the earth before the great flood. Something about the vapor canopy filtered out harmful radiation and such, plus the added humidity in the air kept people crispy fresh.

The crazy part is that this was a rather large private school (400+ high school students) in Seattle. I wonder if they still teach that sort of nonsense?

@Old Fat Bald Chick Magnet Why is it more “credible” to turn a blind eye to the fact that one party failed to make an argument? My entire problem with this is that Ham offered nothing of intellectual substance and was actively dishonest. It does nobody any favors to not call him out on that.

@Dan It’s just tone, really. It seems pretty clear that you’re Team Nye, so why not exercise your chops a little and write neutrally about the guy with whom you disagree? (Unless, of course, that’s not in the click-baity Uproxx style manual–in which case, well done.)

Was watching this last night before I retired for the night. It was pretty entertaining. In regards to your point:
“That said, he’s lucky Bill Nye doesn’t have a mean bone in his body, because Nye could have completely destroyed him last night.”
I don’t think that’s true. From what I gathered, it seems as if Bill Nye is not a ‘good’ debater…well, as good as a debater as you think he is.

@Mike Keesey Not to spark a debate, but could you elaborate on “the book” not agreeing with itself (assuming you’re referring to Genesis). I’m actually pretty far in the book atm, so I’m quite interested.

I fully admit that I’m an atheist, and here’s my argument when I come across Creationists:
Ok!, so God created everything, and he gave humankind 10 commandments to live by. If he built this earth and this universe for us, wouldn’t he also have given certain commandments to the universe, so that the moon wouldn’t one day just decide to crash into the earth and kill us all? Those commandments he gave the universe are called “science.”

TheRealMSol – why do you need an imaginary friend? That’s my question for people who seem to be reasonable, or rational, but believe in god. They will never give an answer as to why they choose to believe that. The truth ususally turns out to be fear of death/ meaningless/randomness of existence that they can’t stomach without it. Security blankets, and imaginary friends are for children.

@Soft and Wet, the main discrepancy is that order of creation is different in the Elohist and Jahwist accounts.

Elohist:
1. light and darkness
2. sky waters, sea waters, and a vault between them
3. land and plants
4. sun, moon, stars (set into the vault, like gemstones)
5. aquatic and flying animals
6. land animals
7. people (male and female)

Jahwist:
1. earth and heavens (including a garden in Eden, and various streams of water)
2. one man
3. rain; beasts of the field, birds of the air; plants
4. one woman

Nye didn’t dumb down his speech enough and articulate his point on the Creationism not being able to predict or model out future activity only prescribe an answer to the past.

But it doesnt matter the Christian faithful saw it not as a challenge on their faith but that it was a way to preach scripture to atheists and them science lovin Con-Christian Christians who have lost their way.